Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Former Palestinian hunger striker and detainee, Khader Adnan, has been on a hunger strike for seven consecutive days in protest of his administrative detention in Israeli jails, without charge or trial, according to Adnan's family.

Shortly after he announced a hunger strike, Adnan was transferred to a solitary cell by the Israeli prison administration as a punitive measure, his family told WAFA Palestinian News & Info Agency.

Adnan is a senior Islamic Jihad official and a former prisoner and hunger striker. He was re-arrested by the Israeli authorities in July 8, 2014, two years after he was released from Israeli prisons following a 66-day hunger strike against administrative detention, where no formal charges were laid against him.

Adnan is said to be a pioneer of the lone-wolf hunger strike movement in Israeli jails, where prisoners protest their administrative detention by launching an individual, rather than mass hunger strikes.

Though he has been detained several times since 1999 on the basis of alleged activities related to Islamic Jihad, Israel has never charged him with involvement in attacks on Israelis.

Under administrative detention, Israel detains Palestinians without a direct charge and holds them in jail for indefinite, renewable periods.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy which violates international law. more